I'm new to Ruby and I'm looking to write a CLI app. My app is not suited for a web app. I'm running Ruby 2.2.2 on OSX and Ubuntu.
Can I use Rails to build an app that is strictly interacting via the CLI (not via HTTP)?
Yes, you can definitely use a Rails app. That's the short answer.
As Controllers and Views are likely unneeded in a CLI application, a large chunk of the Rails framework will be obviated entirely. But Rails models, ActiveRecord, Arel and the database management aspects are really powerful. How nice it would be to just leverage those.
SHOULD you? Outside the scope of your question and highly dependent on your requirements & personal preference, which I'm not privy to, of course.
Related
We want to add the routes defined by an LDAP authorization application (a pure API application) to our core rails application, under the path /ldap-auth.
We have the option to use any technology we want for the LDAP authorization application -- we could write it with rails-api, Sinatra, even pure rack -- though we lean toward rails for codebase consistency. The key point is that it's a self-contained application, with its own tests and release schedule.
What would be the most idiomatic rails technology for this use case? Reading the guides it seems that a rails Engine or a mounted Rails API app are the natural possibilities.
My questions are:
What factors should guide my choice of one over the other?
The Engine guide states that "engines and applications can be thought of as almost the same thing, just with subtle differences, as you'll see throughout this guide." However, even after reading through the guide, it's still unclear to me why one would choose to use an engine, versus mounting an ordinary rails app. I'd appreciate clarification on this point.
Finally, if we do decide to go with a mounted rails API application, we'd like to keep it in the same repo. Where is the most idiomatic place to the code? Under /lib?
What is difference between Ruby and Ruby on Rails? OK, I know that Ruby on Rails is a Web app framework that is built on the scripting language Ruby.
But why are there options on godaddy.com to choose hosting for Ruby and hosting for Ruby on Rails?
Would it be the same to put hosting for C# and for asp.net?
You can check it here
Well I would guess it's a marketing thing/trick as far as GoDaddy is concerned.
There are other frameworks written in Ruby besides Rails, Sinatra for example, and you can very well write your web applications without framework (your own server, does exactly what you need it to do).
Although, all of that, including Rails, can be named Ruby hosting.
Krule's on the money. The difference is between a language and a framework. Ruby, the programming language, can be used to support any number of web and application frameworks.
By their wording, it's safe to say that it's more of a marketing reason using the ruby on rails buzz word.
Other than that it could mean default support for all the necessary tools for common ruby on rails development scenarios.
When Rails applications seem hard to deploy (or used to be), what about Django, TurboGears, Symfony, CakePHP -- can they be simply deployed using mod_python or mod_php? Actually, won't it need something like a mod_django so that the code can run in a "Django" environment? (Just like Rails' script/console or Rails 3's rails console)
Django applications can certainly be deployed with minimum fuss using mod_python.
That said, experienced people will tell you to use the more lightweight and efficient mod_wsgi instead of mod_python. This too can be done with minimum effort. I have done it on multiple occasions and app deployment was always the least of my worries.
Update
#Rebus has it right:
mod_python is not being actively developed anymore, use mod_wsgi
There are a number of ways to deploy a Django site. See the Django Docs or the Django book. As mentioned mod_python is dead and mod_wsgi is the recommended method. Another method which has been making more noise lately is gunicorn. You can see Eric Holscher's blog post about how easy the deployment can be with it.
For CakePHP if you have a standard PHP installation, you probably, at most, only need to load mod_rewrite. This module is often included in the build, though.
I've been learning the Ruby web framework Sinatra lately, and I'm finding it great to use. Most of the articles and blogs I have read about it seem to assume that it is good only for small websites, or 'tiny' web-apps. Is this true? Can a complete web application be built in Sinatra, or is Ruby on Rails the way to go?
You could, in theory, build an entire web application using Sinatra, and it would offer you more precision control than Ruby on Rails would.
That said, it also removes all of the nice features ruby on rails gives you, such as the Model-View-Controller architecture.
If you're looking to build a web application with database interaction, I strongly advise you use Ruby on Rails.
If you're looking to build a very simple API or something that just takes some data and throws it up onto Twitter or something, go ahead and use Sinatra.
There is no reason that it couldn't be used to build an enterprise website. It's fast and intuitive. Two key things in building a larger web application. While it does lack many of the features of Rails, I am yet to run into a road block.
I personally like the slim nature of Sinatra. It embraces routing instead of making it a headache.
I usually find myself wrestling with Rails, whereas I configure Sinatra to my liking.
As for database interaction, mongo_mapper + Sinatra works very well.
I am developing an application in using Ruby on Rails, mostly as an excuse to learn the language.
This is not intended to be a web-based application - and perhaps I have chosen the wrong language, but...
My understanding is, that in order to run an instance of this application on somebody else's computer, they would need to install ruby on rails, and a webserver (or webrick, perhaps), as well as my application code.
I am just curious if there are any other options for distributing my application as a standalone app, or perhaps just a simple way to package up a web browser and ROR together with my app for a simple, one-step install?
I have personally never needed to do this. But, I have ran across this tutorial http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/distributingrubyapplications/rails.html that I think will be helpful. The tutorial covers how to actually convert a rails app into a standalone exe file.
Note, Slingshot appears to be a dead project (see comments). I'll leave this answer here for historical purposes and the off-chance that it comes back
Joyent's Slingshot might be a good bet.
Joyent Slingshot allows developers to deploy Rails applications like a standard desktop application, which work online and offline (with synchronization), have drag and drop, and interact with all the other desktop applications.
With Joyent Slingshot:
Create a hybrid Web/desktop application
Synchronize online and offline data
Use the same code for online and offline application(s)
Deploy and update your application easily
Drag into and out of application
Here are some further links to help with your evaluation and/or to help you get started:
Introducing Joyent Slingshot
Basic application walkthrough
Slingshot wiki
The way most people ship ruby programs, including Rails webapps, as a standalone exe is via rubyscript2exe. They describe how to package a Rails application at http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/distributingrubyapplications/rails.html. Ruby, Rails, and all the associated libraries will be included in the EXE file.
As others mentioned, Ruby is not necessarily Rails and if you really want an easy way to write a distributable GUI application in Ruby, Shoes is an excellent place to start looking.
Gears on Rails maybe?
You could always consider compiling your Ruby to JVM byte-code (via JRuby) or .NET byte-code (via IronRuby) to distribute to people who have those virtual machines and don't want to install a Ruby runtime.
You might want to check out Shoes for building desktop applications in Ruby. Rails really is tuned for building websites.
You can include Ruby on Rails by freezing it to the version of Rails you want to use in your project. They call this Freezing. The user will not have to install Rails to use your application. You can do this with any library you use in your project. If the project uses a library, just place it under the Vendor folder in your project. Then use a tool similar to what #Josh answered with to package it.
You will need a web server to run the project though. There is no way around this. Ruby on Rails is just like ASP.NET in this regard, in that it is a server side framework. The server runs the code and outputs the HTML to the browser by using the Rails framework.
Unfortunately, you may have picked the wrong framework to do what you want. Instead of Ruby on Rails, you may want to check out Shoes, which is a framework for developing GUI applications using Ruby.
You do not specifically say whether it is supposed to be a GUI application or not. From the other answers, I would guess so.
Therefore, you need to clarify what your goals are. RoR is a specialized framework for web applications. If your goal is to learn RoR, I'd say to get yourself some inexpensive web hosting and make yourself an app. If your goal is to learn Ruby, not necessarily Rails, then Shoes, IronRuby, JRuby, MacRuby and others may be good options to look at.